Why were the voice-over and happy ending added?
Ridley Scott made Blade Runner in a style called “film noir.” Film noir is a “hardboiled detective” style of story-telling, perhaps the most famous example of which is the Humphrey Bogart movie The Maltese Falcon (directed by John Huston). A trademark of the film noir genre is a voice-over by the protagonist, explaining what he is thinking/doing at the time. It is often claimed that Ridley Scott never wanted the film to have any kind of voiceover whatsoever, but this is inaccurate. As he himself explains on his DVD commentary track, he was quite open to the idea of a voiceover (there is a brief voiceover towards the end of the Workprint). Indeed, according to Hampton Fancher, the idea of a voice-over first originated with Scott himself: “Ridley was the one who initially pushed the voice-over idea. That’s why it’s in so many of my drafts. Scott was after the feel of a forties’ detective thriller, so he liked the idea of using this film noir device” (Future Noir, 292). Scott himself conf
